A testimonial to our data trainer

Ellen Ver­bakel has ded­i­cat­ed her career to pro­vid­ing edu­ca­tion­al sup­port for the research com­mu­ni­ty. The team at 4TU.ResearchData express their thanks and best wish­es to Ellen as she begins her retire­ment.

“I learned to walk in the shoes of the researcher,” says Ellen. “I realised that I had to under­stand why researchers were reluc­tant to share their research out­puts before I could find solu­tions to over­come their objec­tions.”

Devot­ing time for one-to-one engage­ment with researchers helps to demon­strate the many ben­e­fits of mak­ing research more open. “Even­tu­al­ly, researchers come to realise that pub­lish­ing their research out­puts rais­es their pro­fes­sion­al pro­file by increas­ing their impact, vis­i­bil­i­ty, data reuse and cita­tion rates.” 

She adds, “What’s more, they have access to safe and secure repos­i­to­ries to access their pub­li­ca­tions and data for years to come. No more hard copies col­lect­ing dust!”

The Open Access Move­ment 

Ellen explains that her per­son­al cor­re­spon­dence with researchers helped to dri­ve Open Access pub­lish­ing, a move­ment ini­ti­at­ed at TU Delft to make sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge open­ly acces­si­ble and free of charge to all.

“The pol­i­cy on Open Access Pub­lish­ing man­dates that researchers pub­lish their accept­ed peer-reviewed arti­cles in the TU Delft Repos­i­to­ry for research pub­li­ca­tions. Sim­i­lar­ly, there is encour­age­ment for stu­dents to deposit their reports and the­ses in the edu­ca­tion­al repos­i­to­ry. And, in accor­dance with the TU Delft Research Data Frame­work Pol­i­cy, from Jan­u­ary 2019, all doc­tor­al can­di­dates must upload their data 4TU.ResearchData before their defence.”

The informed researcher 

Ellen has suc­cess­ful­ly engaged researchers in order to dri­ve a cul­ture change toward Open Research with­in her insti­tu­tion through the coor­di­na­tion of train­ing.

Ellen part­nered with Infor­ma­tion Spe­cial­ist, Dirk Jan Ligten­belt, to deliv­er the ‘Informed Researcher’, a TU Delft Grad­u­ate School course designed for 1st year PhD can­di­dates. The two-week online course, that runs eight times per year and accom­mo­dates a max­i­mum of 16 stu­dents, offers stu­dents an oppor­tu­ni­ty to mas­ter infor­ma­tion and data skills so that they can locate, eval­u­ate, select, col­lect, organ­ise infor­ma­tion to con­duct their research effec­tive­ly and effi­cient­ly from the begin­ning of their project. 

“Essen­tial­ly, this is a ‘crash course’ where stu­dents learn how to inves­ti­gate and ref­er­ence lit­er­a­ture, man­age data, and pub­lish arti­cles,” says Ellen.

“The syl­labus intro­duces use­ful tools and ser­vices to help stu­dents organ­ise their work effi­cient­ly, and includes 4TU.ResearchData as the rec­om­mend­ed repos­i­to­ry for the long-term preser­va­tion of data and code as part of their data man­age­ment plan.”

Train­ing for data sup­port­ers

Ellen believes in the pro­vi­sion of train­ing for RDM sup­port staff to ensure that researchers are ade­quate­ly sup­port­ed in their work.

“A dual approach must be tak­en to pro­vide train­ing for researchers and RDM sup­port staff simul­ta­ne­ous­ly. Train­ing helps to build and main­tain a con­nec­tion among sup­port staff, and helps to relieve the bur­den of researchers.”

Ellen was a coach for ‘Essen­tials 4 Data Sup­port’, a course devel­oped by the RDNL alliance that com­pris­es 4TU.ResearchData, DANS and SURF­sara. The course is designed for RDM sup­port staff, such as librar­i­ans, IT and infor­ma­tion spe­cial­ists, data stew­ards and research office staff, and pro­vides basic knowl­edge and skills required to help them take the first steps to sup­port­ing researchers through­out all stages of the research data life­cy­cle. 

“Par­tic­i­pants devel­op soft skills that are essen­tial for engag­ing researchers and make valu­able con­nec­tions to devel­op their own sup­port net­work,” says Ellen. “After all, when data sup­port staff com­mu­ni­cate and col­lab­o­rate, every­one in the research com­mu­ni­ty ben­e­fits.” 

‘Essen­tials 4 Data Sup­port’ is deliv­ered three times per year and has trained more than 300 par­tic­i­pants to date. The upcom­ing course runs from 11th March to 22nd April 2021 and is open for reg­is­tra­tion!

Going glob­al with a MOOC

Ellen has worked with a dynam­ic team of RDM experts from The Uni­ver­si­ty of Edin­burgh, Dig­i­tal Cura­tion Cen­tre (DCC) and RDNL to design ‘Deliv­er­ing Research Data Man­age­ment Ser­vices’, a Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) that has edu­cat­ed more than 3,000 data sup­port­ers from across the globe since it was first deliv­ered in 2019.  

The six-week-syl­labus cov­ers fun­da­men­tals of RDM prac­tice, includ­ing mod­ules on repos­i­to­ry cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, meta­da­ta doc­u­men­ta­tion, cre­at­ing data man­age­ment plans, data shar­ing, and legal issues. 

As part of the course, par­tic­i­pants also under­take a gap analy­sis to eval­u­ate their insti­tu­tion’s abil­i­ty to deliv­er research data ser­vices, and devel­op their own RDM roadmap to facil­i­tate their deliv­ery (Reg­is­ter to be noti­fied when to enrol for the upcom­ing MOOC). 

Wit­ness­ing RDM sup­port­ers unite online to par­tic­i­pate in the MOOC has filled Ellen with an over­whelm­ing sense of pride and accom­plish­ment.

“It’s great to see pro­fes­sion­als of all career stages come togeth­er to learn and build their net­work beyond their own research insti­tu­tion.” 

She con­tin­ues, “It’s tru­ly reward­ing to receive pos­i­tive feed­back from par­tic­i­pants, espe­cial­ly those in least devel­oped coun­tries who express immense grat­i­tude for the oppor­tu­ni­ty to par­tic­i­pate in the MOOC and ben­e­fit from the com­mu­ni­ty spir­it.”

Ellen leaves us with a final reflec­tion. 

“The proud­est moments of my career have been to watch begin­ners, who are often inse­cure and have lim­it­ed knowl­edge, blos­som with con­fi­dence and enthu­si­asm dur­ing their RDM train­ing. I’m pleased to retire know­ing that I have con­tributed to their per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al growth, and that they will con­tin­ue to make a dif­fer­ence with­in their research com­mu­ni­ties.”

- E. Ver­bakel (The ‘Data Train­er’)

Writ­ten by Con­nie Clare (4TU.ResearchData)
Cov­er image illus­trat­ed by Con­nie Clare (4TU.ResearchData)